Clare Broome Saunders is Senior Tutor at Blackfriars Hall, and Lecturer in English at St Catherine’s College. Her research interests include nineteenth-century women's poetry, nineteenth-century uses of history, particularly medievalism, and nineteenth-century women travel writers in Europe, which are reflected in her recent publications. She teaches a range of courses in the long nineteenth century.

Current projects include a book on the political uses of Anglo-Saxonism and medievalism in the long nineteenth century, a study of the continuities and connections between the work of William Blake and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and a chapter contribution on women writers for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism.

Dr Broome Saunders continues her research focus on the work of Louisa Stuart Costello (1799-1870), who was a poet, travel-writer, translator, medievalist, historian, novelist, and visual artist.

Literature in English, 1760-1830; Literature in English, 1830-1910; Literature in English, 1910-present; Prelims Paper 1: Introduction to Language and Literature; and a range of FHS Paper 7 dissertation options in the long-nineteenth century.

MSt. dissertation superviser for a range of topics in nineteenth-century literature.

Clare is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Selected Conference papers

'EBB's negotiations with William Blake's “excess”', Measure and Excess: INCS International Conference, University of Roma, Rome. 13-15 June 2018.

'“Now thy living wreath is won': Corinne and the woman poet in Hemans”, 'L.E.L', and 'EBB', Reputations, Legacies, Futures: Jane Austen, Germaine de Staël and their contemporaries, 1817-2017, Chawton House Library, Hampshire, 13-15 July 2017.

Saunders uniquely explores how women poets, biographers, historians, and visual artists used medieval motifs, forms, and settings to enable them to comment more freely on controversial contemporary issues, such as war and gender roles.

Literary Criticism

Women Writers and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism

2009

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Book

Broome Saunders explores how women poets, biographers, historians, and visual artists used medieval motifs, forms, and settings to enable them to comment more freely on controversial contemporary issues, such as war and gender roles.

'"I Have Read the Lady's Magazine": The Materialities of Charlotte Bronte's Medievalism'

Chapter

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Charlotte Bronte: Embodiment and the Material World

This chapter considers the ways in which Charlotte Brontë uses the gender roles of medievalist discourse to explore women's place in history and in contemporary society. It focuses particularly on 'Shirley', a novel which offers Brontë one of the roles she so envied those 'born in time to contribute to the Lady's magazine': that of contributor to cultural discussions on the contradictory situation of women in society.